


One Faithful (the Scalene remix)

by randomalia (spilinski)



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Pining, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 10:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4217739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spilinski/pseuds/randomalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These days, Orrock has been paying attention to Jack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Faithful (the Scalene remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Navigation](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/123531) by subduction. 



> Remix of subduction's fantastic fic Navigation. The title and quote are from the song The Minstrel Boy by Thomas Moore, believed to have been written after the 1798 Irish rebellion.

_One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard  
One faithful harp shall praise thee._

 

Orrock learnt to sew when he was nine. He remembers hours sitting in the small, quiet room his grandmother favoured, too close to the fire to be comfortable, too far from the window to see. She would sit across from him in her high-necked lace, her skirts ruffled against his small knees and she would put things in his hands: white handkerchiefs, stockings, a torn tablecloth. _Here, Charles_ , she would say. _Hold it like this, put the needle here, don't tear it_. She hardly seemed to watch him while she embroidered her screens, pulling coloured threads through and through and through, but she always knew when he had pricked his fingers, always reached out quickly to grasp his hand and scold him.

She said, _Your father I never taught to sew_ , and Orrock had not asked why, had not said anything at all. It wasn't only sewing she wanted him to learn, it was everything; she made him follow her as she wiped windowsills, moved chairs, shook the billowing white sheets out the door. He walked next to her down the street, followed her in to church and back out again on Sundays, took her instructions without complaint. He does not know, now, why he was singled out in this way. He considers that she might have felt alone, like his grandfather did.

Orrock remembers those afternoons spent sewing when he sits next to Jack Hammond on the rolling deck of the _Hotspur_. He remembers being new in a new house and a new family. He draws the sailcloth over his knee and points to the rents in it; he says to Jack: "Hold it like this, pull these two pieces together. Don't tear it." They sit in silence for hours, Orrock watching Jack's progress and Jack watching his own. When Jack's hands seize and sputter Orrock catches them, rubs the blood back into the fingers, presses the knuckles back into straight lines.

The sun begins to set over them as they work, bright and strong. The sailcloth turns to honey; up above the other boys are skylarking as the light breaks over them, setting them afire, new ropes of red pulled taut beneath their feet. Orrock takes in the sight of it, the way it reminds him of a plain tall house standing in a row of plain tall houses with twilight breaking at the end of the road. He remembers he used to watch it change: red gold, dark blue, black.

Jack seems uninterested in the view and he sits beside Orrock with their shoulders touching, his white collar turning grey in Orrock's shadow, finishing his work on the sail. Orrock finds himself watching as Jack smooths over the stitches and tries to gather up the cloth, hearing it rasp under his fingers and against his shoes. He thinks: Jack prefers the middle watch. He thinks: tonight, after the sun is down and Orrock has been relieved, Jack will turn his face up and gaze at the stars. Orrock sees in his mind the way Jack's shoulders drop under a night sky.

Orrock helps fold the cloth, they call over some of the hands to fill their arms as well. Three hours and a dull pain in his back, a lesson that Jack will remember: Orrock considers it a job well done.

Later they sail into dirty weather. The wardroom is filled with the rush of noise that is rain on the sea, and Orrock sits down to cards. Jack stands off to the side, watching and not watching as Orrock shuffles silently. Lantern light sweeps over his hands, pools on the surface of the table. He's holding a queen of spades and a ten, an ace and a six of clubs. A three of diamonds. A jack. He slips the cards one over the other, he begins to sing and a memory hits him softly under the ribs: a rainy night running alongside the Liffey, black water and brown puddles. The smell of soil and air washed clean.

At his back the wardroom door opens and closes, neat and quiet, and Orrock looks around to see Jack has gone, and he sets the red three down on the polished surface. He watches the game spool out around the table and he's thinking, again, about Jack. He thinks of Jack standing on the quarterdeck in the light rain, of Jack and Lieutenant Bush on the quarterdeck in the light rain. Lieutenant Bush and the hard turn of his mouth, the speculative gaze in his eye. The quarterdeck and the light rain.

There was once a fiery afternoon where Orrock stood outside the Royal Exchange, all of ten, his wrist caught up in a firm grip. His grandmother bent to speak to him, well-dressed people were passing them by, and she reproved him for not listening, for not paying attention.

These days, Orrock has been paying attention to Jack.

He carries out his duties, he watches his gun crew, he keeps his head up and his shoulders straight, and still he thinks about Jack and the quarterdeck, Jack and Lieutenant Bush. The image lingers like hunger, like the ring of a shot in fine air; it's with him as the weather clears, as the drills are performed, as he oversees the holystoning of the deck, after a battle. He looks closely and carefully when Jack turns to him and asks why the crew touch the dead, sewn neatly into their hammocks and hidden under a flag. Orrock doesn't know.

Lieutenant Bush would know but neither would ask him. He drives them hard, his sharp orders are relentless, uncompromising. One of the crew gets a flogging and Orrock stands statue-still beside Jack, who flinches and tenses and says nothing for long hours afterward. _Don't ever do that_ , Orrock wants to tell him. _Don't ever do anything to be punished_. He forgets himself and puts a hand on Jack's back as they go down the stairs, turning him away from the spilled blood, away from Bush's steady gaze.

Bush, of course, says nothing. Orrock is aware of a danger all the same.

The days ebb from Tuesdays to Fridays to Sunday, and on Sunday Jack passes him a clean shirt and he feels grateful.

The shirt is a little close across the shoulders and its hem hangs neat and right, heavier than usual. Orrock follows the line with curious fingers and finds a small weight, a desperate stitch; for luck, he thinks, for safety. Protection. It settles on him like daylight and he makes space for it alongside the other things he knows. This is Jack: Jack's love of the middle watch, Jack's fear of blood, the bend of Jack's fingers when he sews. The pale light of the skin on his back. The way he daydreams instead of sleeping and the way, honest and wanting, he watches Lieutenant Bush on the quarterdeck.

Orrock remembers that afternoon by the Exchange: the well-dressed people, the sun sinking slowly in the west. What he had wanted, then, was to throw sticks in the river, but he knows now that his grandmother was talking about something else. _To get what you want, you have to pay attention_ , she said, warm fingers around his wrist. She wanted him to wish for something. Something clear, something true.

Orrock reaches out as he goes past and Jack's shoulder is lean and warm beneath his palm. He feels the shift of muscle and the fine working of bone.

The lesson Orrock has come to learn is this: if you pay attention, you learn what it is you should want, and that isn't the same thing at all. What he wants, and what he should wish for, are things with a space between them that's not easy to stitch.

He steps out onto the deck and falls in with his fellow officers for inspection, he watches Lieutenant Bush approach and stares out over the far rail, his shoulders pressing backwards, his collar stiff and clean against his neck. He remembers standing out here waiting for the flogging to be over and feeling a strike of worry, deep-set and hazy. _Listen, Jack_ , he had wanted to say, though he said nothing at all. _Don't ever do anything to make that happen to you._

Some of the men are jostling each other and Orrock sends them a hard look. He straightens his arms, keeps his body still, and if he concentrates he is sure he can feel the pull of the bearing sewn into his hemline. Something clear, he thinks. Something kind.

Bush passes by. The captain's voice is pleased as it rings out across the deck. The horizon is blue, the sun high in the sky and beside him, he knows, Jack is smiling.


End file.
